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Monday, December 30, 2013

The Movie Quote Contest XI: The Contest's Little Secret 

Greetings from the far edge of 2013, fans of the Invisible Ben. Some of you may have thought that I abandoned this patch of virtual real estate given the absence of even one update since this blog's tenth anniversary a few months ago. In contrast to some of my previous unplanned sabbaticals, my silence was not due to a lack of noteworthy events. 

To the contrary, I've been keeping a rather busy schedule. Work-wise, manuscript revisions, curatorial responsibilities, and--as the new semester is nearly upon us--teaching plans, occupy my time. Otherwise, there have been trips to New England and the Midwest, including a Thanksgiving dinner with the Invisible Sister, as well as museum expeditions, holiday parties, and of course, the pub quiz. 

Somehow, with everything else going on in my life, blogging has slipped through the cracks. From what I can tell, my experience is somewhat typical of the first generation of personal bloggers. Poring once again over the Invisible Blogroll, it appears that only one of the websites listed has been updated in 2013 and only slightly more recently than my last post. (Keep up the good fight, Ramblin' Dave!) Is this the result of the increasing availability of new social media platforms, the Facebooks and Twitters that enable us to stay connected and share media without as much effort or reflection? Or are those of us who took up blogging during--or in my case, slightly after--getting to a point in our lives where the notion of maintaining a personal blog seems intrusive or narcissistic?

Obviously, I can't speak for anyone else's motivations. People could stop blogging for any number of reasons, and perhaps eventually that will be the case for me. I confess, there would be something rather poetic about wrapping things up with my final post, exactly ten years after I started leaving these little notes here for you to find. But occasionally I do find myself with something worthwhile to say, so for now at least the tales of this invisible blogger will continue, albeit at their current, somewhat sporadic, pace.


Now some of you may be wondering what happened to the blog's annual holiday movie quote contest. Well, never fear...I did find time to whip something up, just not in time for any solstice-related celebrations. Still, it's often said that the start of a new year is a cause for celebration, so without any further ado, I'm pleased to present the eleventh (!) incarnation of the Holiday Movie Quote Contest.

The rules remain the same as ever. Below you will find 50 quotations from 50 different movies. Identify as many as you can in the comments below. The winner will receive an Invisible Trophy to decorate their mantlepiece.

Enjoy, and I'll catch up with you again in 2014!



 
The Holiday Movie Quote Contest
1. “Something familiar, something peculiar, something for everyone...a comedy tonight!”

2. “Did you ever hear the story of the old woman who shook her head at the family so much that one night it fell off? Right on the dinner table.”

3. “You teach yourselves the law, but I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush. You leave thinking like a lawyer.”

4. “Ain't a son of a bitch in the world has to know we're in that pool. We'd just be a few old farts paddlin' around in that pool. Who's gonna know?"

5. “All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men, but I ain't never thought I'd have to fight in my own house.”

6. “You don't know who I am. You don't know where I am. And you'll never see me coming.”

7. “You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat. Huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh? No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? Okay. They lose their noses!”

8. “With my brains and your looks, we could go places!”

9. “Don't eat the car! Not the car! Oh, what am I yelling at you for? you're a dog!

10. “You know what they used to call Alcatraz in the old days?"
“What?”
“Bird Island.”

11. “You've tricked and fooled you readers for years. You've tortured us all with surprise endings that made no sense. You've introduced characters in the last five pages that were never in the book before. You've withheld clues and information that made it impossible for us to guess who did it. But now the tables are turned!”

12. “All I know is I have to catch an Austrian Airlines flight tomorrow morning at 9:30 and I don't really have enough money for a hotel, so I was just going to walk around, and it would be a lot more fun if you came with me.”

13. “Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!”

14. “Of course, I can get a hell of a good look at a T-bone steak by sticking my head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather take the butcher's word for it.”

15. “Listen to me, Mister! You're my knight in shining armor. Don't forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight and away we're going to go, go, go!”

16. “Who expects a psychologist to think? Especially when you are so busy thinking what you think other people are thinking?”

17. “You can lose all your points for any one of three things. One: If you cry. Two: If you ask to see your mother. Three: If you're hungry and ask for a snack. Forget it!

18. “Well, I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.”

19. It's like looking in a mirror. Only...not.

20. “We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should love each other outside of time...detached.”

21. “Hemingway did have one plot suggestion. He doesn't quite believe that the protagonist doesn't see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes.”

22. “When you give up your dream, you die.”

23. “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley. Ding, ding, ding went the bell. Zing, zing, zing went my heartstrings, as we started for Huntingdon dell.”

24. “You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

25. “Mike, let me tell you something. The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it. The way the sun goes down when you're tired, comes up when you want to be on the move. That's real magic.”

26. “Falling in love is a crazy thing to do. It's like a socially acceptable form of insanity.”

27. “He was like a god walking amongst mere mortals. He had a voice that could make a wolverine purr and suits so fine they made Sinatra look like a hobo.”

28. “You stole your father's armor, ran away from home, impersonated a soldier, deceived your command officer, dishonored the Chinese Army, destroyed my palace, and...you have saved us all.”

29. “His real name is Charles Lee Ray, and he's been sent down from heaven by Daddy to play with me.”

30. “There's no room for personal feelings in science, Judith!”

31. “This box is full of stuff that almost killed me.”

32. “If something should happen to me, put on my suit. The reindeer will know what to do.”

33. “Inside the center my boys would be clean, and outside they'd be surrounded by the same rotten corruption and crime and criminals. Yes, yourself included.”

34.”Why did I take up stealing? To live better. To own things I couldn't afford. To acquire this good taste that you now enjoy and which I should be very reluctant to give up.”

35. “I can't offer you a legally binding union. It won't hold up in the state, the county, or frankly, any courtroom in the world, due to your age, lack of a license, and failure to get parental consent. But the ritual does carry a very important moral weight within yourselves.”

36. “It's better to help people than garden gnomes.”

37. “I don't want to be rich and respectable. I want to be just like the rest of you.”

38. “I see. So what you're saying is that even though you are an almost-paralyzed, multiphobic personality who is in a constant state of panic, your wife did not leave you. You left her because she...liked Neil Diamond?”

39. “Me, I'm gonna have more money than you ever thought you could have...you and all the rest of you stinkin' sons of...Benedicts!”

40. “The war started when people accepted the idiotic principle that peace could be maintained by arranging to defend themselves with weapons they couldn't possibly use without committing suicide.”

41. “Weigh anchor! How much does it weigh? I don't know...I forgot!”

42. “You just point the damned thing at Earth. It's not rocket science.”

43. “I'm gonna find the guy who invented Xylocaine and kiss his ass on Hollywood and Vine!”

44. “I'll give you the best performance you ever saw in hotel bedroom.”

45. “Kowalski! We'll need to win the hearts and minds of the natives. Rico! We'll need special tactical equipment. We're gonna face extreme peril. Private probably won't survive.”

46. “As the good book says, if you spit in the air, it lands in your face.”

47. “I'll do to you things that are beyond all known philosophies! Wait until I get my devices.”

48. “I have never seen blood crystals as anemic as these. They may be mental giants, but physically, by our standards, they must be very primitive.”

49. “I was abducted into the Prussian army two years ago, and now have been put into your service by my Captain Potzdorf, and his uncle, the Minister of Police to serve as a watch upon your actions.”

50. “I'll be back!”
Only in a rerun.”

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